Slashdot Mirror
BBC Shuts Down Internal BlackBerry Service
sebFlyte writes "Silicon.com is running a story on a little problem the BBC is having with their email. Apparently, the BBC has suspended service to all its executives BlackBerrys, because the server software was randomly sending chunks of messages to arbitrary users, thus showing execs each others emails. Not what you want from your remote-working solution, really."
SLASHDOT, FRONT PAGE! RUN IT!
What? The bug was fixed in a later version?
It's a slow news day. RUN IT!
kjskdvnjkas hfjkh fjj sfkdsak fkldsfj ajsf ksjaflkjfskd jask
skjf salkdfj skldfjkljsdnfjsndf
------------------------
Sent from my handheld Blackberry.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
You mean it's not a good thing for the execs to communicate with one another?
Oh wait, you mean when the execs say something like, "Yeah, that Bob from Accouting. What a tightwad. I'm pretty sure if he bent over the board in his ass would snap."
Never mind. Now I understand.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
hmm. Didn't they (BBC) just layoff or outsource a huge part of their IT staff? Perhaps the lack of personel to properly set up the application (Blackberry Server) might be part of it? Can you really 'get by' without experienced help? Is this a result of the BBC slashing their IT staff to the bone? I would dare say that it would be hard to argue that it did not have some effect.
Methinks it would help jumpstart collaboration-ware
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
saying that he was going to lift up my tight leather miniskirt and spank my because I was a bad girl. (hint: I am male)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Dissatisfied with your current size? Use a natural enhancer "Looks like our CEO has some confidence problems..."
Did it mix chunks of messages? That could really cause some fun... "Hey Bob, I really need that report on $*%)^ your hot body... I can't wait to rub my hands all over your @!@#%! convention. You should be ready to go on a moment's notice. -- Phil."
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It's a good reminder, and thus newsworthy. Never write something into an email that you wouldn't say to the face of whoever you're talking about.
Talking about confidential matters is what encryption and the telephone or face to face conversation is for. And if you have a "party-line" the telephone won't work either.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
In that case, either ask for a raise, or a head start.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
...a mail with content like "My wife's on vacations, so what do you think sweetie? Tonight at 9PM? Luvz." arriving to another exec.
:)
Hilarity ensues
Did they not get the memo?
. shtml to access the service pack and a list of fixed issues, software updates, and additional information.
Service Pack 3 for BlackBerry Enterprise Server v4.0 for Microsoft Exchange is now available for download.
Please visit http://www.blackberry.com/support/downloads/index
Thank you,
BlackBerry Software Releases
Research In Motion Limited
Telephone: 1-877-255-2377 | (+1) 519-888-6181
Email: help@blackberry.net
Web: http://www.blackberry.com/
Get up!
Not surprising really, if you think about it your data is usually only a few bits away from going somewhere you dont want, its just a question of how many bits and how likely they are to be corrupted.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Research in Motion's stock is down over $5 today and has trading has been halted on the TSX. Coincidence?
"news for nerds, stuff that matters"
news - an email bug affecting 300 people is not news
for nerds - email isn't nerdy
stuff - it is indeed stuff
that matters - 300 people getting their email shut off for a couple weeks is not news at all. it isn't even their PC email, it's email sent JUST between blackberries.
this story is so useless that i'm not even going to finish my
The BBC tech department amuses me. Not patching on schedule, etc.
Follow the link in TFA that goes to the BBC's limiting employees to the use of PocketPC2002. Pretty funny stuff there:
"An internal email from the company's technology division stated all PDA platforms other than PocketPC are insecure - which will prevent anybody operating a Palm or Psion handheld device from using their PDA at work."
Which impies that the Beeb's tech division believes PocketPC to be secure. If we've learned anything over the decades, no system is secure.
The email said reasons of security and unusually, the "exposure to users of health and safety risks" left the company with no other choice but the PocketPC platform.
Health and safety risks for not using PocketPC? What, like Palm caused PDAs to emit toxins or explode in 2002?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'm not having an affair with your best friend!
It was just the email system malfunctioning!
I swear!
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
Dear Joe,
It has come to my attention th
hould have seen the size of her knoc
uments have been shredded ahead of the auditor's vis
s the biggest assh
unch on Friday?
Sincerely,
Dave
It's sad to see marketing -speak cross over from the boardroom to Slashdot articles and posts. Seriously, there's more marketing jargon in some threads than a stack of press releases from a soon-to-be-bankrupt 1999 dot-com.
If you'll excuse me, I have to use the solid biological waste transport solution for something that's robust, scalable and end-to-end.
(hint: I am male)
You're posting on slashdot. Male is the default setting.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
1. Avoid gossiping about your colleagues. 2. If (1) fails, avoid being _the_ office gossiper. 3. In any case DON'T WRITE IT DOWN!!! Not on paper, not on email, not no nothing! Still I bet there were some extremely funny incidents.
I don't know about today, but I can relate my experience.
I once was part of an e-mail group and was assigned the task of writing a pseudo-mime interface into our smtp allowing transfer of binary information. (This was pre-mime.)
I would amass large test streams of e-mails and data for testing. And while I did strive for discretion, invariably I got a peek here and there of the e-mail messages. I had to assert complete conversion in and out of binary form with no changes to the originals. I did do this mostly with diff scripting, but for sanity checks would read text to ensure that the starting point of my work looked reasonable and uncorrupted.
I wasn't surprised to see very personal messages exchanged, but what surprised me most was the blatant conducting of what were clearly illicit affairs via e-mail! And, how many times I saw those kinds of messages!
I never associated message text with address info, so it was anonymous voyeurism, but I must say I was shocked.
Word to the wise, never conduct any transactions or conversations via e-mail you wouldn't mind showing up in some blog, or bulletin, etc. I suspect the level of monitoring of e-mail is even more prevalent today than the day I was doing that work.
To still produce unmanaged software. Sounds like pointer problems or buffer overruns to me. This is an expensive way to find out though. Java or .NET for me (for enterprise applications).
About 300 BBC execs checked into drug clinics throughout the UK today... With bloodshot eyes and fingers still tapping madly on their non-functioning crackberries, they demanded a quick replacement, before the removal symptoms became too much to manage.
From TFA:
The company said in a statement: "RIM has developed and tested a fix for an obscure bug identified in a specific service pack release for BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The bug was isolated to version 4.02 and does not exist in version 4.03 or other earlier versions. RIM is aware of a single reported incident of the bug and responded promptly with a fix."
Probably it's not even a technical problem, just some BOFH having some fun on the mail server!
...but the general idea of a meltdown where messages got sent from corporate bigwigs inboxes and outboxes to random people.
Personally I think that's a little slice of chaos I've been wondering how long it would take to happen.
Someone had to do it.
At least they didn't post something claiming it was caused by storm-generated capacitance and other new age numbo-jumbo.
If you're employed by Research In Motion, does that mean you've got a RIM-job?
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
ba dum ching!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I just happen to have a patent on a system and method for sending random bits of information to unintended users via a handheld device. I'll be rolling in money, if Research In Motion Ltd. leaves me any, that is.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The BBC IT seem to have a very peculiar notion of security, anyway. Witness the quote from TFA: The issue of risk has figured large in [the BBC's] PDA strategy. In 2002, the BBC banned any of its staff from using devices not based on a Microsoft operating system.. So they enforce use of MS to reduce risk? Errr...
This quote points to another Silicon.com article from 2002 saying, "We believe PocketPC includes all functionality and is one the most secure platforms available."
Which, to say the least, is a strong statement in light of the multiple vulnerabilities affecting MS products. The functionality issue is certainly defensible, but as for security, I have a doubt.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Stick a fork in Research In Motion(RIM) because they are done. The stock's collapse and the halt on trading are only the beginning of the end. The patent suit against them means that they no longer have a viable product that they can call their own. All of their profits will now be handed over to the patent holder and RIM will be forced to shutter by year's end.
It will be interesting to see what all of the Blackberry users do then because I don't feel that the patent holder is up to the task of supplanting RIM.
Don't feel bad. It is ok for males to wear tight leather miniskirts.
Could the BOFH be working for the BBC? That's just the kind of thing he would do.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Having it's technological backbone whipped out (outsourced to Siemens I think) may have left the animal nothing more than a jelly.
The BBC generally runs pro big business and pro establishment these days and has a slight touch of 'community pamphlet' about it.
Still it's early days for its new management, and I'm hopeful but nevertheless slightly concerned.
Organizer -> PDA -> Remote-working solution
Web browser -> Web 2.0 browser -> Porn-harvesting solution
Outhouse -> Toilet -> Food-egestion solution
Icebox -> Refrigerator -> Provisions temperature-control solution
At this rate, in 20 years we will hear about "illicit purveyors of reality-altering solutions" roaming our streets -- or "vehicle-transport infrastructure solutions," if you prefer.
Whenever I'm called into the boardroom or my boss's at work, I like to walk out afterwards limping a little, slightly bent and grasping my buttocks. Always good for a laugh or two :)
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
We have had outlook send out e-mails as random other users - secretary randomly promoted to CEO, that sort of fun.
Solution involved rebooting every desktop in the enterprise. Not a joke, sadly.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
What is the big appeal of blackberry compaired to standard e-mail protocols. I'm not trolling, I just don't know. From what I see it requires exchange and sometime breaks like this. With my Treo 650 I have full access to email via imap, pop3 or exchange. Does blackberry have its own network (like skytel) that has better coverage that the disgital networks of Sprint or Verizon? They has to be something more than the fact that it limits characters to 128 or something.
While "frantically" installing SP3 after reading this article (it's only been out for 7 days or so) I noticed a "silent BCC" option in the BES config. You enter an email address and it automatically bcc's you on every message sent to/from all the Blackberrys. This is rather disturbing, and I can't really see any reason for it. Sure I can always just give myself access to their Exchange Mailbox, but still... disturbing.
Honestly I can't wait until this NTP patent infringment thing brings down RIM, releasing the market from the blackberry stranglehold. While the blackberry itself is a decent piece of technology (the J2ME platform is a good thing), RIM's server software is an altogether different beast. Perhaps due to legacy issues, but probably mostly for profit reasons, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server software that you MUST have to do anything with the blackberry on the back-end is a giant, proprietary mess. It is deeply dependent on Windows (integrated into the WMI), it does bizzare things to communicate with the blackberry devices (most models don't have their own TCP/IP stack, so all communication must go through the BES's proprietary protocols), the user and device management stuff is really a joke.... I jsut can't say enough bad things about this server software. It just sucks.
The I.T. world would be a better place if RIM were to collapse, taking their ugly BES with them. What we need is a BlackBerry-like device, with its own TCP stack, a very simple gateway server, using only open protocols (web services would be a really realy good thing, for example). This will not happen as long as RIM is runnign things. The BES is a cash cow for them... a single BES user licenses costs almost as much as the blackberry device itself (with the profit margin on a license being 99%).
Imagine a beowulf of
In soviet russia
4. Profit!
welcome our new blackberry overlords
------------
This message sent from my wireless blackberry
Apparently, the BBC has suspended service to all its executives BlackBerrys, because the server software was randomly sending chunks of messages to arbitrary users, thus showing execs each others emails.
Random is a state of mind: "God does not play dice with the universe."
One simply doesn't have the necessary information, that's all. Understandably -- many things, to know how they work, you have to read the quantum states of so many elementary particles, it'd make your head spin (and not in a good way).
So it might as well be random. No way to know. So we might as well guess.
Either (A) some people unknown are fucking with those execs, or (B) God is fucking with the execs.
Almost certainly (B), in my opinion. But who knows?
-kgj
-kgj
Siemens is a Microsoft whore! That I know for sure.
this happened at the place i used to work. small construction company. execs thought it'd be a good idea to get all the foremans blackberries. different guys got emails that were intended for other people with really disturbing shit in them like:
."
"man we sure screwed that customer over big time, F*#$ed them for all the were worth. .
mix that with all of the office love affairs e-mails, and i didn't know whether to laugh or cry when i read my messages.
most of the guys that found out about the crap going on quickly found other jobs, as did i.
i think this was more of a wetware problem then software. they were never willing to pay good money for the right people to do a good job (another reason i left) and i think whoever cobbled together the network did a crappy job.
just for the record, if your in the san diego area, don't ever hire protec.
"God does not play dice with the universe."
...
I would remind you of Stephen Hawking's rejoinder to that famous quip by Einstein:
God not only plays dice with the universe; he throws them where they can't be seen.
This is quite germane to the topic at hand: The blackberries' BES server is proprietary software on top of a proprietary MS system. Lots of dice being thrown there every second, and you have no way of seeing a lot of them. The behavior probably isn't random, but as a mere user, that's the sort of behavior that you will see. And it could be doing all sorts of extra things with your messages, with no way for you to find out what's happening.
If the BBC has concerns about who sees the contents of their messages, they are utter fools for basing it on such software.
Funny thing is that they talk about solving their security problems by moving to a PocketPC system.
Utterly clueless
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
God not only plays dice with the universe; he throws them where they can't be seen. [Hawking, after Einstein.]
This is quite germane to the topic at hand: The blackberries' BES server is proprietary software on top of a proprietary MS system. Lots of dice being thrown there every second, and you have no way of seeing a lot of them.
Right on, this is what I'm talking about. There's usually more going on, about which we have few if any details, but maybe one or two good reasons to be concerned that the dice are tricksy, my precious. I hadn't heard the Hawking quote, by the way -- I love it.
I've got a similar gripe about "bugs" in software -- making the code itself the bad guy, as if the code could be accountable for its own behavior, and if it gets sick, well that is so sad, there's a "bug" in the code.
By contrast, what we (the bug-speakers) calls "bugs", the Japanese call "spoilage". Now there's a metaphor that makes me proud to be a software geek -- yes, the software is fucked up all right, it's spoiled. Hari Kiri time! -- but first, back to your cubicle, de-spoil that code.
-kgj
-kgj